


your arms, your warmth, your heart

by unbalancedlove



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Ghosts, Halloween, Humor, Kissing, M/M, side chensung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-13 21:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbalancedlove/pseuds/unbalancedlove
Summary: donghyuck convinces mark that his dorm room is haunted





	your arms, your warmth, your heart

**Author's Note:**

> one quick halloween themed thing i wanted to drop off before starting my nanowrimo fic. enjoy!
> 
> title from hold me tight by bts.

donghyuck is prone to bad decisions on cold and stormy nights.

today jaemin decided to go to some lame party and leave him alone to watch this horror movie that he picked. okay, maybe he wasn’t forced to watch it, but there’s nowhere else for him to be tonight and no one else to talk to. so it’s going to be him, this movie ghost that's been trapped inside a five-year-old’s body, and the loud thudding of the rain against his window.

he’s snuggled nice and tight under his blanket. the plot of the movie is not exactly original: a family adopts a child who starts doing weird shit like bringing and hiding dead animals around their house or staring out the window without moving for hours. he starts to nod off during the scene where the mother begs a priest for help, but then the priest reveals himself to be possessed too and attacks her with a loud screech.

donghyuck screams and throws his laptop off the bed. he clutches the blanket tight as he breathes heavily, his heart still racing from the jumpscare.

right when he stops shuddering from head to toe, a loud knock startles him again. who the fuck could it be? jaemin said he might not come back tonight, and considering the state of the weather, donghyuck was sure that he wouldn’t.

so that was the first possibility, the second one was that the little kid from the movie is real and he’s here to strangle him with his bare hands just like he did to that poor raccoon.

he opens the door ever so slightly, hiding one of jaemin’s stuffed animals behind his back. he hates that they don't have any sharp objects in their room that would be perfect to use as makeshift weapons when a supernatural being comes over for a visit.

but behind the door there was no ghost (as far as donghyuck could tell, he’s never seen a real ghost before), just one sleepy looking boy with messy black hair wearing a pair of blue pajama pants with a bear pattern on them. cute.

donghyuck’s heart skipped a beat. that was mark lee, the next door neighbor he had been quietly crushing on  for the past few months.

“hey,” he doesn't know why he whispers it. it’s not like there's anybody else in their dorm tonight. it's not like there's a need for him to keep it down when the storm raging outside is deafening.

“hi,” mark replies with a tiny wave, stopping in front of his nose to push his glasses up. extremely cute. “i thought i heard someone screeching? so i came to check and see if everything was alright.”

donghyuck decides to play dumb. “screeching?”

“yeah, it sounded like a little girl? do you have your sister over or something?” he tries to take a tiny peek inside but donghyuck block his vision by leaning into the doorframe.

“i, uh,” he starts the sentence without knowing how he was planning to finish it. bad move. “the truth is….”

mark looks at him expectantly with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. he has to admit that he loves having his full attention, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.

“our room is haunted.”

mark is silent for a second, and then he sighs. “i was just trying to be a nice neighbor, you don't have to make fun of me.”

donghyuck shakes his head furiously. “i’m not joking! it's been there all month! you can come in and see it for yourself if you want.”

he mentally pats himself in the back for finally managing to invite his crush into his dorm room. it doesn’t matter how stupid the lie that he came up with is to get him in there.

mark stares at the laptop on the floor. “you were watching the possession 5? by yourself in the dark? with a ghost?”

“ah, chenle loves horror movies! he finds them hilarious.” chenle is his best friend renjun’s cousin.

“chenle?” mark asks, still suspicious. he is not as innocent and trusting as donghyuck took him to be.

“yeah, apparently he was a kid who came here from shanghai on a school trip. got separated from his class one day and was never found again,” chenle has been living in seoul for three years. “until now i guess. spooky, huh?”

“i mean….sure.”

he turns on the ryan shaped night light on jaemin’s bedside table to reveal the disgusting mess that is their room. the combination of jaemin’s obsessive stuffed animal hoarding and donghyuck’s habit of throwing his clothes on every surface is ungodly. they were both grateful that they didn’t end up rooming with someone who will try to force them to live like functional adults, but everyone else hated coming over.

if mark minded that he was stepping on one of donghyuck’s favorite hoodies, he didn’t mention it.

“so does chenle love michael jackson or….” he starts, enamoured by the posters covering donghyuck’s wall.

“nah that’s just me. chenle is the one with the ridiculous kakao friends merchandise collection.” they both laugh.

“how do you communicate with him, though?” mark asks seriously. “because i haven’t heard him scream like that before.”

donghyuck turns red when he mentions that scream again. “sometimes we hear faint giggling or whispering, but it’s always in mandarin. then jaemin found a news article and the location and date of the disappearance matched perfectly.” all these years of watching shitty horror movies with jaemin were finally paying off. who knew. “i’m shocked about the screaming as much as you are, he usually just giggles at jumpscares.”

“and you never uh….thought you should leave your haunted room?”

fuck, that’s a good question. he thinks about it for a split second before shrugging. “if he wanted to hurt us, he would have done it already, you know?”

mark nods slowly. the knot between his eyebrows is finally coming undone, and donghyuck wants to let out a relieved sigh. “good point. i’ll leave you and your ghost then, i guess?”

wait wait wait this isn’t what he wanted. “oooor uh, maybe, you could,” he was mumbling. lee donghyuck never mumbles. mark stares at him in confusion. “stay with me and finish the movie?”

“with you and chenle?” he asks. it sounds like he’s making fun of him, but donghyuck isn't going to go back on his bullshit story now.

donghyuck scratches the back of his head and sighs. “it’s halloween night and we’re both alone here, wouldn’t hurt to have some human company right?”

mark picks the laptop off the floor and stares at the terrifying face of the possessed priest before shrugging and taking a seat on the floor. “better than staring at the same three pages of my textbook for the rest of the night.” he looks up at the ceiling. “hey chenle! i’m mark lee, nice to meet you!”

he smiles at donghyuck in a way that tells him that this wasn’t just about taking a break from studying, and his heart skips a beat as he smiles back. he pulls the blanket off his bed and throws it over mark before snuggling next to him and hitting play.

 

mark has been in his room for forty seven minutes and fifty seconds, but it only takes donghyuck twenty three minutes and eight seconds to successfully glue himself to the right side of mark’s body. he just can’t help himself, and mark is warm and soft and so inviting. he looks so cute when he’s laser focused on the movie, the wheels in his head turning as he tries to figure out the next plot twist. his round glasses start to slip down his nose, and donghyuck is tempted to push them back up. and maybe drop off a quick kiss on his cheek too.

and fine, maybe there’s another reason why they ended up in this position.

“eeek!” he squeaks and hides his face into mark’s neck when the cursed child’s reflection appears in the mirror while the mother is frantically trying to wipe the blood writing off it. mark just giggles, high pitched and breathy. “stop laughing and just tell me when the scary part ends!”

“my arm won’t protect you from movie ghosts, donghyuck,” he replies cheekily, but doesn’t attempt to get donghyuck off of him. if anything, he’s been leaning into his excessive touching. it’s almost annoying how unbothered he is, that alone terrified donghyuck. the possession 5 was ranked as the most terrifying horror flick of the year.

he smushes his cheeks on mark’s shoulder. “don’t care, i need some form of protection, and your arm is right there.”

mark rests his head on donghyuck’s. “be my guest then.”

_are you just going to agree to anything i say, mark lee?_

the film starts to build up to the climax scene taking place in the house’s secret basement (filled with more animal corpses, of course), and donghyuck grabs mark’s hand and grips into it lightly to prepare himself.

“chenle’s been awfully quiet since i got here, don’t you think?” mark asks casually, pulling donghyuck’s hand closer so that it was resting on his thigh. extra protection.

“i think i’m starting to figure out what upset him so much,” he’s so natural at bullshitting now. “he might have found the depictions of his kind offensive and disrespectful in this movie and decided to storm off?”

“and?”

“maybe he’s hanging out in your room now.” mark’s eyes start shaking. “i’m only joking! your roommate yukhei would scare him away. he needs gentle souls like me and jaemin to take care of his lost soul.”

“these walls are paper thin, i’ve heard you guys argue about whether or not jaemin should dye his hair pink last week and you, specifically, are from gentle.”

every single embarrassing thing that donghyuck has ever said in this room suddenly rushes back to his brain, just yesterday he was delivering a passionate twenty minute long retelling of the elevator ride he shared with mark on the way from class to renjun and jaemin. in his defense, they live on the eleventh floor. that’s plenty of time and a lot happened, like mark saying hello and asking how his day went. very exciting stuff.

the father’s body twists when the boy mutters a curse and then crawls on the floor and attacks the poor mother. god, that woman just can’t catch a break. donghyuck screams along with her and flinches back.

“but you are a big coward,” he continues, sighing fondly and patting donghyuck’s head with his free hand. it was only then (he’s a bit slow, alright?) that he realized that the more scared he looked, the more mark doted on him. the fortune teller he consulted was right, they _are_ a match made in heaven.

the air in the room is a bit somber when the credits start rolling. the rain is still pouring, it was past midnight, and mark no longer had a reason to stay here.

but he does stay. and they stick close together still, their fingers intertwined.

“we’re both playing dumb here, aren’t we,” donghyuck whispers as he shuts the laptop and puts it away.

“by pretending that there is a ghost in the room? yeah, i didn’t want to hurt your feelings so i ju-”

“no!” he replies, laughing. “i mean, well _that_ and the fact that you even knocked on my door in the first place….and then decided to stick around after everything i said.”

mark turns red and looks away. “caught me, i wanted an excuse to see your face. i was hoping for a little chat and maybe a _good night_ and _happy halloween_ but then you invited me in and i felt like i was dreaming.”

donghyuck doesn’t spare a second, he lets go of mark’s arm and leans in.

mark’s so easy to kiss, he melts under donghyuck’s touch, surrenders himself to him like he’s done all night.

“i love how you thought that i didn’t know exactly what your screaming sounds like,” he says when they break apart.

donghyuck snorts. “that’s a good thing, because you’re going to be hearing a lot more of it.”

their noses bump, they smile at each other, and just as they’re about to kiss again, a loud high pitched laugh resounds through donghyuck’s room.

they push each other away and donghyuck screams, chills running through his body.

 

“did you hear that?” chenle says, stopping in his tracks. jisung rolls his eyes at him.

“are you trying to scare me again? because it’s not going to work,” he replies and pulls him away from donghyuck’s room. it’s been a long night and it took a lot of effort to convince the dorm security to let his best friend sleep over just this once.

“no i swear, there was like this rustling and a small muffled scream.”

“you’re just imagining things because you spent the entire day scaring the shit out of people.”

“and you love me for it,” chenle replies, smirking.

jisung doesn’t say no. “let’s go, dumbass.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading ♡♡♡
> 
> you can find me on [cc](https://curiouscat.me/puppylove) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/demonyukhei)!


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